sugar shack
Roses are red,
Violets are purple;
Sugar’s sweet,
and so is maple syrple
– Roger Miller, “Dang Me”
About a week ago, I finally crossed one of those stereotypical New Englandy things off my lifetime to-do list: I went to a maple syrup manufactory, otherwise known as a “sugar shack”. I think I first heard about this from reading the Little House on the Prairie books as a child, and it sounded like so much fun (certainly better than making a balloon out of a freshly slaughtered pig’s bladder, which was another childhood treat enjoyed by Laura Ingalls Wilder). Random aside, in case you don’t already know this: LIW, the author and main character of the Little House books, which were made into a popular TV series in the 70’s, was the mother of acclaimed libertarian writer Rose Wilder Lane. So where was I? Oh yeah, maple syrup.
The weekend of March 28/29 was a statewide open house for sugar shacks in New Hampshire. I met up with several other Free State Project Porcupines in the charming town of New Boston in search of liquid amber sticky sweetness. Another random aside: New Boston used to host the Gravity Research Foundation; it was selected because it sat just outside what was considered the 60-mile radius danger zone if Boston (the old one) were to get nuked.
Requiring somewhere safe from the effect of a potential nuclear war, Babson chose New Boston as the ideal locale just beyond his required 60-mile distance from Boston, which was presumed to be a high-profile target. New Boston would be perfect for research and annual conferences – The Gravity Center of the World!
Roger Babson wanted to erect a sign proclaiming New Boston to be the safest place in North America if World War III occurred, but the Town Selectmen at that time did not agree.
http://www2.new-boston.nh.us/Pages/NewBostonNH_About/gravity
Ah, Cold War trivia. Party-pooper town selectmen! Where was I again? Maple syrup, yes.
My spiffy new GPS unit with the soothing voice which, sadly, cannot compete with the volume of my car radio, led me right past the sugar shack. You’d think that seeing a wooden building with smoking pouring out of the chimney, and lots of kids running around, would have tipped me off, but what can I say; I’m slow. I parked my car about 1/4 mile up the road and walked back to the shack, which was packed to capacity with adults, kids, the random dog, and a huge, noisy contraption belching steam, filled with a clear liquid. Presumably that was tree sap; it was way too noisy to hear what the man who worked there was saying. I concentrated on not stepping on kids and dogs and wondered when I was going to get some sugar. It wasn’t a long wait; a girl with a friendly smile soon started handing out popsicle sticks with what looked like maple taffy stuck to the end. Muttering a brief prayer to the gods of dental work, I dug into it. If muz good mmfff!!
A teenager who worked there then lead a group of us on a walk into the woods to see how the trees were tapped. I had an image in my mind of something like a beer keg spigot and a big wooden bucket hanging on a tree, but that’s not how they do it these days. They use purple-colored plastic tubing linking a number of tapped trees, which are referred to collectively as a “sugar bush”, then rely on the force of gravity to draw the sap down to a large plastic tank. How do they know which trees to tap? Beats me; they all look the same to me. Fortunately for my pancakes, some people can apparently tell the difference.
One of the people in my group found a 10-inch garter snake, and tried unsuccessfully to get it to stick its tongue out on cue for pictures. It seemed to like her; after she played with it for a while and then put it back on the ground, it made a beeline straight back for her.
We trekked back to the sugar shack, where I enjoyed a cup of warm maple syrup. A rooster was running around outside crowing and doing silly rooster things to amuse the children. Since that day, I’ve spotted treetap purple tubing in the woods twice already. I would have had no idea what it was if not for the tour of the sugar shack. Good times. Good sticky, teeth-rotting times.
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